"Robert F. Young - Thirty Days Had September" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

very thought of its passing racked him with unbearable agony and instinctively he did
the only physical thing he could do to sustain it.
He put his arm around Miss Jones' shoulder.
She did not move. She sat there quietly, her breast rising and falling at even
intervals, her long lashes drifting down now and again like dark, gentle birds winging
over blue limpid waters—
"The play we watched last night," Danby said. "Romeo and Juliet—why didn't
you like it?"
"It was rather horrible, sir. It was a burlesque, really—tawdry, cheap, the beauty
of the lines corrupted and obscured."
"Do you know the lines?"
"Some of them."
"Say them. Please."
"Yes, sir. At the close of the balcony scene, when the two lovers are parting,
Juliet says, 'Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say
good night till it be morrow.' And Romeo answers: 'Sleep dwell upon thine eyes,
peace in thy breast! Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest!' Why did they
leave that out, sir? Why?"
"Because we're living in a cheap world," Danby said, surprised at his sudden
insight, "and in a cheap world, precious things are worthless. Shay—say the lines
again, please, Miss Jones."
"'Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good
night till it be morrow—'"
"Let me finish." Danby concentrated. "'Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace—'"
"'—in thy breast—'"
"'Would I were sleep and peace, so—'"
 "'—sweet—'"
"'—so sweet to rest!'"
Abruptly, Miss Jones stood up. "Good evening, madam," she said.
Danby didn't bother to get up. It wouldn't have done any good. He could see
Laura well enough, anyway, from where he was sitting. Laura standing in the
living-room doorway in her new Cadillette pajamas and her bare feet that had made
no sound in their surreptitious descent of the stairs. The two-dimensional cars that
comprised the pajama pattern stood out in vermilion vividness and it was as though
she was lying down and letting them run rampant over her body, letting them defile
her breasts and her belly and her legs …
He saw her narrow face and her cold pitiless eyes, and he knew it would be
useless to try to explain, that she wouldn't—couldn't—understand. And he realized
with sudden shocking clarity that in the world in which he lived September had been
dead for decades, and he saw himself in the morning, loading the case into the Baby
B. and driving down the glittering city streets to the little secondhand store and
asking the proprietor for his money back, and he saw himself afterwards, but he had
to look away, and when he looked away he saw Miss Jones standing incongruously
in the gaudy living room and heard her saying, over and over like a broken,
bewildered record, "Is something wrong, madam? Is something wrong?"




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